


Let Me Have That

by Psilent (HereThereBeFic)



Category: Steam Powered Giraffe
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-07
Updated: 2013-03-07
Packaged: 2017-12-04 14:18:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,751
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/711666
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HereThereBeFic/pseuds/Psilent
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Every engineer who spends enough time poking around in my head gets it into theirs that they can fix something about me. It's usually a Walter, and it's usually that."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Let Me Have That

**Author's Note:**

> **ETA 2015, copypasted to all SPG stories:** I just want to note that this was written before Bunny's announcement about Rabbit's gender, hence all the incorrect "he" pronouns and etc. No disrespect meant to Bunny or her character.
> 
> I have considered going through all of my old SPG stuff and switching the pronouns and other relevant details but I am (for unrelated reasons) no longer a part of the SPG fandom and don't really know what's going on with the lore, whether Rabbit's pronouns etc were retconned vs if she canonically transitioned, and I would find it very emotionally taxing to go searching for the relevant answers and then comb through my old works to fix all the details in a way that makes sense. Tbh I kind of hope no one is still _finding_ any of these stories, and I'm mostly leaving them up in case any of them happen to be somebody's old favorite or something.

They weren't exactly like uncles. Peter had always called them that, because he did love them, and it seemed to make them happy.

But they weren't like uncles, because they were only  _like_   _humans_. They were  _people_ , certainly. People whose memories were consistently wiped. People who were continuously checked over to make sure nothing in their brains had disconnected in a way that might make them dangerous. People who might tell him stories about the wars one day and have no idea what war he was talking about when he asked for more the next day, while his father and Wanda muttered about self-duplicating files and hidden programs.

They helped raise him, yes, in that The Spine was trusted to babysit for short periods, and they could educate him on matters of science and history on the days when they remembered anything further than a week ago, and The Jon had always been a good source of distraction and entertainment when he was small, and Rabbit had a tendency to decide that there was a specific thing Peter should learn and that he should be the one to teach him and Peter usually agreed to go along with this because the experience was almost always educational on some level - just perhaps not the one Rabbit intended.

So, yes. They did, it had to be said, have a not insignificant hand in the process of "bringing him up."

But after a certain point, they started to become a responsibility.

Peter expected it. He had grown up with the knowledge that the Steam Man Band was going to be his, someday. That the sentient beings he spoke to and played with were made of metal and therefore technically, legally, not his family but his family's  _property_.

His property.

His responsibility.

His  _job_ , to keep The Jon in good repair and make sure he was drinking enough Crystal Pepsi and keep track of how much they had left.

His job to help his father or Wanda drag Rabbit kicking and screaming down to the workshop for repairs or a standard maintenance checkup. His job to eventually do that by himself.

His job to keep The Spine's mind running smoothly.

This last one unnerved him.

The Spine, on the face of things, seemed the most...  _human_ , of the robots, and Peter twisted himself in knots reminding himself not to replace that word with  _normal_ and then wondering why, if normality wasn't the issue, it was an issue at  _all_.

But. The Spine seemed the most human, and, under an entirely different definition, also the most  _normal_  - the most put together, the most... sane.

He was also the one with the most consistent memory relapses. Peter didn't know this, as a child. He didn't know it for a very long time as a teenager. He wasn't trusted, that early on, with the responsibility or the right to meddle with those processes, those circuits - the automatons'  _brains_.

That changed when he was seventeen.

He didn't particularly like this change, at first. It was odd. He'd worked on the bots before; he'd opened up plating to reconnect wires and false ligaments in their limbs; he'd been elbow-deep in their chest cavities while they were awake and talking to him.

Which was the strange part, now. They were always switched off for repairs or maintenance to do with thought processes, memory files - it was, essentially, brain surgery.

And he didn't like it. He didn't like that they couldn't tell him if he'd done something wrong. He didn't like the fear that he would go to turn them back on and nothing would happen. He didn't like them lying there on the table, opened up and motionless and  _quiet_ , like - like -  _machinery_. Broken machinery.

And it was The Spine he saw most often like this.

And he couldn't  _talk_  to The Spine about it, because part of the protocol for a memory wipe was wiping the memory of the memory wipe. The robots knew they got them. They knew, now, when some of them had been. They weren't meant to know five minutes after the fact.

Still. There was his father, who had gone through the same surreal process, and his mother, who was good at telling him what his father had  _meant_ by whatever he said to him, and all in all by the time Peter was twenty he mostly had a handle on things in that regard.

The thing about mostly having a handle on something is that it tends to make you want to jump in and fix every possible problem with that thing so that you can prove how much of a handle you have on it.

When Peter called The Spine in to the lab to talk, he wasn't exactly sure how to go about starting the conversation he wanted to have.

The Spine started it for him.

"I've been in here a lot," he said flatly, and Peter sat down hard on a work bench.

"I - wh-"

"My memory is full of holes, Peter. I know what that means."

"...Ah. Well. Well, yes. Yes, you're right." Peter rubbed the back of his neck and stared at the floor and started regretting things. This was never a good course to get himself started on, so he tried to curtail it by clearing his throat and speaking up again. "I wanted to talk to you about -"

"My mind."

"Yes."

"What is it you think you can fix?"

The Spine did not say it mockingly. He did not sigh steam, he did not raise an eyebrow, he did not sound bored or angry or exasperated.

He sounded tired.

Peter forged ahead. "This desire you have to be more human, to  _be_  -  _human_ , the distress you experience due to the discrepencies you detect between yourself and humanity. All I would have to do is find the code instructing you on things like human mimicry and - tweak it a bit. It should be simple."

"Yes. It should be."

"It would take a few hours, maybe."

"Probably."

"Nothing else would be affected."

"Mm."

Peter looked at him and felt like he was missing something. Something obvious. He remembered that feeling from lessons with his father, who, while usually a good teacher, too often fell into the habit of staring at Peter until Peter found the answer on his own, which worked roughly half the time and left Peter feeling sick and stupid roughly all the time.

"You don't want me to," he said, trying not to sound confused or frustrated.

The Spine gave a twitch of a smile that had to have been deliberate. "No."

"Why not?"

He dragged another work bench over and sat down across from Peter, and Peter knew it had nothing to do with The Spine's own comfort and everything to do with putting the two of them at least closer to the same height.

"My mind has been wiped and reset... many times, Peter," The Spine said quietly. "I don't know how many, because I don't... remember all of them. I'm not supposed to. That's the point, sometimes. But I know it's happened. I know it will keep happening. I know... what I am."

Peter couldn't think of anything to say to that. He made an effort to wrench his gaze up off the floor and make eye contact with The Spine. He owed him that respect, at the very least.

"Every engineer who spends enough time poking around in my head gets it into theirs that they can fix something about me. It's usually a Walter, and it's usually that."

Peter wished the bench had a back that he could slide down. He kept his mouth tightly shut, knowing he would start mumbling justifications if he opened it.

"My... issues, in that regard, Peter, are one of the only things about me to have survived all the mind wipes. I've lost memories. I've lost personality traits. I've lost likes and dislikes. I've lost my musical abilities,  _twice_. And then I gained most of those things back. Through programming. Through codes. Through what  _other people_  wanted for me. Of me."

Peter bit his tongue and fought not to look back at the floor. These were things he'd thought of, things he'd worried about, things he'd convinced himself didn't actually  _bother_  the bots.

"This desire to be human, this -  _obsession_ , the 'distress,' as you put it, not inaccurately, the makeup, the outfits - It's never been lost. And if it was, no one would put it back. Even if I asked. And I'm not sure I would. But. Seeing as I do  _have_  it, I'm also not asking anyone to get rid of it. I'm...  _asking_  you  _not_  to. It's part of me, Peter. Maybe by now I've convinced myself that it's part of me in a way that can't be defined by programming or code. And if you went looking for it,  _actually_  looking for it,  _specifically_  - you'd find it. And I'd be wrong. And I..."

The Spine shook his head. Steam curled up from his mouth. "Let me have that, Peter. Please. Let me believe I'm something more than what I am."

"I -" Peter stopped. Because he had been about to tell The Spine that maybe the fact that he  _wanted_  to be something more meant that he was. But the fact was, that want could be programmed out of him. That was the entire point.

Peter stood to go, and then realized they were in his lab, and then sat back down and looked around for something to pretend he was busy with.

And actually, he was busy, with several things, but he couldn't bring himself to move again. Or to speak. He should really, really be saying something, but  _what_? What the hell did someone say to that?

The Spine stood, and put his bench back in place. He turned to go.

"I'm sorry," Peter blurted out desperately, and nearly covered his mouth a second later, because  _what_?

But The Spine stopped in the doorway. "You wanted to help me, Peter."

Peter took a deep breath. "I wanted to fix you. And you don't... fix people. You... You fix machines. And. I'm sorry. Just. I'll - I'll remember that. I'll - keep that in mind. From now on."

The Spine turned to look at him, and Peter wondered how many times he'd had this conversation with somebody.

He wondered how many of those somebodies had had his name.

But The Spine smiled. "Thank you, Peter."


End file.
